"The
fifth commandment, 'Thou shall not kill,'
is not God's commandment at all:
It is a Jewish
invention."Statement
of the high Nazi official Stahle after the
protest, on December 4, 1940,
by the evangelical priest Sautter against
the criminal acts of euthanasia
(http://www.sobibor.info)

"When the first GI's [American
soldiers] started returning home from
the war [after liberating Dachau
and other camps],
one of the things that drove them crazy
was that no one would believe what they
had to say!
No one would believe the stories of what
they saw."

.Dwight
"Ike" Eisenhower, the Supreme Commander of
the Allied Expeditionary Forcewith
other US Officers at Ohrdruf,
a subcamp of the Buchenwald
concentration camp,
after liberation.Photo
Credit: The Holocaust
<martinfrost.ws/htmlfiles/holocaust.html>

.
We wish to remember.
But we wish to remember for a
purpose, namely
to ensure that never again
evil will prevail. ...
Only a world at peace, with
justice for all,
can avoid repeating the
mistakes and terrible crimes
of the past..John
Paul II, Yad Vashem, March 23,
2000..

A
Polish
Jewish
Family
(The
Rotmenschs)
--wife,
children
and
grandchildren
with
armbandsIn
order
to
mark
and
isolate
the
Jews,
a
decree
of
November
23,
1939,
ordered
all
Jews
above
the
age of
10 in
the
General-Government
of
Poland
to
wear
white
armbands
with a
blue
star
of
David.

Gone
now
are
those
little
towns
where
the
shoemaker
was a
poet,
The
watchmaker
a
philosopher,
the
barber
a
troubadour.

Gone
now
are
those
little
towns
where
the
wind
joined
Biblical
songs
with
Polish
tunes
and
Slavic
rue
Where
old
Jews
in
orchards
in the
shade
of
cherry
trees
Lamented
for
the
holy
walls
of
Jerusalem.

Gone
now
are
those
little
towns,
though
the
poetic
mists,
The
moons,
winds,
ponds,
and
stars
above
them
Have
recorded
in the
blood
of
centuries
above
the
tragic
tales,
The
histories
of the
two
saddest
nations
on
earth.

Mala
Zimetbaum,
interned in Auschwitz-Birkenau, was
an interpreter there. Despite her
high status, she gained the sympathy
of the inmates, and in turn, helped
her fellow prisoners.
She
became the first woman to escape
from
Auschwitz,
but was caught and returned to the
camp. She committed suicide rather
than be killed on the
gallows.
[Source:
http://motlc.wiesenthal.com/pages/t087/t08761.html]

Throughout
the Holocaust, Jewish
women revealed their
strength in the face of
adversity. During the
1930's, they tried to
keep their families safe
and create a sense of
normalcy. When their
husbands and loved ones
were being sent to
concentration camps,
they either went
underground and became a
part of the resistance
movements, or they
helped other women in
the camps to survive.
This paper explores
the experiences of
Jewish women during the
Holocaust.

Upon
arrival,
the masses of Jews were immediately
sorted
for death or slave
labor.

The
Jewish Community of Gyula and the Shoah:
Documents[2003
Edition; Compiled and the Introduction
Written by Mrs Kereskényi Edit
Cseh
Studies of Gyula 6 Edited by Gyula
Erdmann
Translated from Hungarian by Mrs Edit
Miskolczy and László
Miskolczy
Published by Békés County
Archives with the sponsorship of
Békés County
Self-Government
English translation sponsored by Gyula Jewish
Foundation]

Plaque
unveiled by Sir Nicholas
Winton on 16th September 2003
at Liverpool Street Station in
London, UK --this main London
railway terminus. Two of the
rescued Kinder, Harry Heber
and Erich Reich, were present
at that memorial event.

Anne
Frank: An International Symbol
of Hope for MankindOn
the Holocaust from Anne
Frank's
Diary:"
...this cruelty too shall end,
peace and tranquillity will
return once more"
"...I still believe, in spite
of everything, that people are
truly good at heart.".--
July 15,
1944.

"I
can see the
world
gradually
being turned
into a
wilderness,
I hear the
ever
approaching
thunder,
which will
destroy us
too, I can
feel the
sufferings
of millions
- and yet,
if I look
into the
heavens, I
think that
it will all
come out
right, that
this cruelty
too will
end, and
that peace
and
tranquility
will return
again. In
the
meantime,
I must
uphold my
ideals, for
perhaps the
time will
come when I
shall be
able to
carry them
out."

."It's
a wonder I
haven't
abandoned
all my
ideals, they
seem so
absurd and
impractical.
Yet I cling
to them
because I
still
believe, in
spite of
everything,
that people
are truly
good at
heart.
.
Its's
utterly
impossible
for me to
build my
life on a
foundation
of chaos,
suffering
and death. I
see the
world being
slowly
transformed
into a
wilderness,
I hear the
approaching
thunder
that, one
day, will
destroy us
too, I feel
the
suffering of
millions.
And yet,
when I look
up at the
sky, I
somehow feel
that
everything
will change
for the
better, that
this cruelty
too shall
end, that
peace and
tranquility
will return
once
more"
----From
Anne Frank's
Diary, July
15th
1944.

Somebody
called the German
Security Police to
notify them that
Jews were in
hiding at 263
Prinsengracht.
Exactly who that
was has never been
discovered. This
is a question that
many people still
want answers to.
There were certain
suspicions and a
first
investigation was
conducted in 1948.
Fourteen years
later, once again,
an attempt was
made to unravel
the mystery of who
was responsible
for the betrayal.
In 1998, Melissa
Müller, in
her biography
about Anne Frank,
suggests a woman
named Lena-Hartog
van Bladeren as a
possible suspect.
Two years later,
another writer,
Carol Anne Lee,
presents a new
theory in her
biography about
Otto Frank. She
believes the
guilty party is
Tony Ahlers, an
acquaintance of
Otto Frank.

Eleven-year-old
Liliane Gerenstein,
born January 13, 1933
in Nice, France,
wrote a heart-rending
letter to God just
days before the
children of Izieu
were sent to their
deaths at
Auschwitz:

"God? How
good You
are,
how kind and
if one had
to count the
number
of
goodnesses
and
kindnesses
You have
done,
one would
never
finish.

God?
It is You
who
command.
It is You
who are
justice, it
is You
who reward
the good and
punish the
evil.

God?
It is thanks
to You
that I had a
beautiful
life
before,
that I was
spoiled,
that I had
lovely
things that
others do
not
have.

God?
After that,
I ask You
one thing
only:
Make my
parents come
back, my
poor
parents
protect them
(even more
than You
protect
me)
so that I
can see them
again as
soon as
possible.

Make
them come
back
again.
Ah! I had
such a good
mother and
such a good
father!
I have such
faith in You
and I thank
You in
advance."

The
poem below was written by a
young person in the Terezin
Ghetto, where the arts
flourished as a defiance of
the soul, even in Children.
Nothing free, like the
butterflies or the Jews,
lasted long in the Captivity
of brutal men. Pavel could
watch butterflies soar over
barbed wire, fences and guns,
until there were no longer
butterflies. It is a poignant
reminder not only of the depth
of expression in young Jewish
souls, but of the captivity of
art in having to hide defiance
and honor in
metaphor.

"I
Never saw Another
Butterfly"

I
never saw another
butterfly . .
.

The
last, the very
last,
so richly, brightly,
dazzling
yellow.

Perhaps
if the sun's tears
sing
against a white stone
. . .

Such,
such a yellow
Is carried lightly
`way up
high.

It
went away I'm sure
because it
wished to kiss the
world
goodbye.

For
seven weeks I've
lived in here,
Penned up inside this
ghetto,
but I have found my
people
here.

The
dandelions call to
me,
And the white
chestnut candles in
the court.

President
Truman meeting on May 8, 1951 with
Prime Minister David Ben Gurion of
Israel and Abba Eban. They presented
the menora as a token of esteem for
President Truman's timely
recognition of the State of Israel
on May 14, 1948.

Nussbaum's
most famous painting:
Self-Portrait with
Jewish Identity Card,
probably from late
1942. The Nazi
occupation ID card
states JEW in French:
JUIF, and in Flemish:
JOOD

This
detail image portrays
the German-Jewish
painter Felix
Nussbaum, who was
raised in Osnabruck,
a city in Germany.
During the war, Felix
and his wife Felka
Platek were in hiding
for their lives in
Brussels, Belgium for
three years. They
were arrested in 1944
and deported on the
last transport of
Jews from Belgium to
Poland. Felix and
Felka were prisoners
No. 284 and 285 on
the train in which
they were deported on
July 31, 1944. They
were gassed to death
at Auschwitz on
August 3, 1944. Felix
was 39 years old and
Felka was 45.

Unable
to Work / Les inaptes
au travail131x162 cm, A
Living Memorial to
the Holocaust, New
York.

Inability
to work was often
an immediate death
sentence.
In the background
of this painting,
smoke rises from
the crematorium to
form the SS
insignia. Of the
one thousand Jews
in the convoy that
brought
Olère to
Auschwitz, 881
were immediately
gassed. Only six
of the 119
selected for work
survived the
War.

Gassing
/ Gazage
131x162 cm, A Living
Memorial to the
Holocaust, New
York.
The container in the
lower right is
labeled Zyklon
B.

Although
Olère spent
most of his time
doing art for the
SS and translating
BBC radio
broadcasts, he
was, from time to
time, called upon
to help empty the
gas chambers.<shoah.freeservers.com/photo.html>
<fcit.usf.edu/holocaust/resource/gallery/olere.htm>

The
Experimental Injection / La
piqûre
expérimentale
1945, 92x72 cm, A Living
Memorial to the Holocaust, New
York.
The infamous Dr. Mengele
administers an injection as
terrified prisoners look
on.<shoah.freeservers.com/photo.html>.

.

.

.

.

The
Terezin (Theresienstadt)
concentration camp, an hour
north of Prague (
Czechoslovakia), was called a
"model ghetto" during the
Second World War. The Nazis
showed it off to the Red Cross
to prove that conditions
weren't as horrific was
thought, and that child
inmates were in fact being
educated by other imprisoned
artists, writers and
intellectuals. The reality, of
course, was different, only
some 10 per cent of the 15,000
children sent there between
1942 and 1944 survived the
war. What did survive,
however, were over 4,000
drawings and paintings they
left behind, one of which is
posted at left under the title
"Happier Place:
Picture from Terezin."[Source:
Montreal Holocaust Memorial
Centre]

.

.

Yehuda
Bacon(b.
1929)[Yad
Vashem Art Museum]

In
Memory of the Czech Transport to the
Gas Chambers, 1945, Charcoal on
paper

Yehuda
Bacon was born in Czechoslovakia to a
Chassidic family. In 1941, he was sent
to Terezin (Theresienstadt) at the age
of thirteen, where he began to draw.
Whilst in Terezin, he studied under the
direction of artists Otto Unger,
Bedrich Fritta and Leo Hass. In 1943 he
was deported to Auschwitz. He emigrated
to Eretz Israel with the Youth Aliya in
1946, studied art at the Bezalel
Academy of Art and then continued his
studies in Italy, London, New York and
Paris. In 1961 he testified at the
Eichmann trial. Bacon lectured in the
art department of Haifa University and
at the Bezalel Academy of Art,
Jerusalem.

A
short time following his liberation
from Auschwitz, the sixteen-year-old
Bacon drew this portrait of his father
who perished in the death camp. Like a
necromancer, Bacon conjures up the
thin, exhausted face and blazing eyes
of his father, the disembodied face
ascending from the smoke. The image of
the father whose life was ended in the
furnaces of Auschwitz is reconstructed
by the son who still remembers the
father he was recently separated from.
This recollection will never be
eradicated since Bacon committed it to
paper. The turbulent mental state of
the artist is manifested by the
agitated, quivering lines surrounding
the portrait. In the lower section of
the drawing, where we would expect to
see his father's body, we detect the
crematoria and a body hanging off the
barbed wire fence which surrounded the
camp. In the right-hand corner, the
artist has added the date and time:
10.VII.44, 22:00 - marking the exact
moment when his father perished.

[Originally
designed for fifty-two horses, these
wooden stables were used extensively in
Auschwitz-Birkenau. Each provided the
living space for over a thousand
prisoners. More than two hundred of
these barracks were built. In typical,
thorough fashion, they were constructed
complete with the rings for tying the
horses attached to the walls.]
Polish artist Jan Komski is a survivor
of Auschwitz. His personal history is
full of remarkable events, including
being part of the very first prisoner
transport to arrive in Auschwitz, and
being part of one of the most famous
escapes from the camp. (To read a
synopsis of Jan
Komski's
story,
click in here.)

1.
an electrified barbed wire
fence,
a ditch,
and a wall with seven guard
towers
surrounds.

human
remains arrive suffocated
and left in boxcars.
the camp is intended for the
incarceration
of political
opponents.

they
were buried in mass graves
until the construction of
crematoriums
was completed.
new and more efficiently
built
it is estimated that it took
10-15 minutes to incinerate
a body there.

exact
numbers of the victims are
inconclusive,
because no one took record after
the flood
of russian p.o.w.s

2.
at the time of liberation
the american troops forced
local farmers to drive carts
loaded with corpses through the
town of dachau
to educate the people
there.

3.
prisoners hair was sent
to a. zink fur manufacturer ltd.
of nuremburg
.50 marks was to be paid
for every kilogram of hair
sent.
womens hair, because it was
longer,
was spun into yarns
and made into socks for boat
crews.

4.
m. tregenza
archeologists report, dachau:
during an excavation
uncovering the mass grave
he puts his hands to the deep
grey sand
finds carbonized wood and human
bone fragments
and one incisor tooth
shinning in the black like a wet
glass eye.

5.
today it is possible
to buy a brand new condo
a few feet from the walls of
dachau
youll see the trenches
beyond your backyard fence
and above your neighbors
house
the tall mcdonalds sign
glowing in the
distance

You
who live safe
In your warm houses,
You who return in the evening to
find
Hot food and friendly
faces:

Consider
if this is a man
Who works in the mud
Who does not know peace
Who fights for a scrap of
bread
Who dies because of a yes or a
no.

Consider if this is a
woman,
Without hair and without
name
With no more strength to
remember,
Her eyes empty and her womb
cold
Like a frog in
winter.

Consider
that this has been:
I commend these words to you.
Engrave them on your hearts
When you are in your house, when
you walk on your way,
When you go to bed, when you
rise.
Repeat them to your
children.

Or
may your house crumble,
Disease render you powerless,
Your offspring avert their faces
from you.

"Today
in Germany the proper form of grace
is 'Thank God and Hitler.'"
"But suppose the Führer dies?"
asked the boy.
"Then you just thank
God."

Hitler
and his Fortune Teller:

As
Hitler's armies faced more and more
setbacks, he asked his
astrologer,
"Am I going to lose the war?"
"Yes," the astrologer said.
"Then, am I going to die?" Hitler
asked.
"Yes."
"When am I going to die?"
"On a Jewish holiday."
"But on what holiday?"
"Any day you die will be a Jewish
holiday."

To
Hang or Not to Hang Them?

In
Munich, cabaret performer
Weiss
Ferdl
would
bring out large photographs
of Hitler, Goering, and other Nazi
leaders, and then think out
loud,
"Now should I hang them, or line
them up against the
wall?"

Music
and Concentration Camps -- A
Contradiction in Terms
Music in the Antechambers of
Hell --Composing and Making
Music in Concentration
Camps

Camps
established for humiliation,
dehumanization and
extermination as opposed to
music, that wonderful art. But
music did exist in the
concentration camps. At first
in the songs of the prisoners,
from which developed songs of
the resistance such as the
song of the bog soldiers. As
the camps became larger and
more musicians were among the
prisoners real camp orchestras
were formed.
The victims
used that cultural activity to
preserve their dignity and
self-respect. But the music
was misused for propaganda
purposes and for the inhuman
interests of the SS in the
camps. Even in Auschwitz, that
terrible place which today is
a synonym for the crimes of
the Shoah, there were several
orchestras

From
Dr Stefan Kames of The
Australian National
University:
<http://64.233.161.104/search?q=cache:3iqrNSlxHzwJ:www.anu.edu.au/NEC/kames.pdf+concentration+camp+music&hl=en>

Music
Silenced By Hitler

During
the course of World War II,
the Nazis successfully used
their control of music and the
arts as a powerful propaganda
weapon against those aspects
of German cultural life they
hated most. In terms of music,
this eclectic blacklist
included compositions from
Europe's modernism movement,
music written by Jewish
composers, music containing
explicit sexuality, black
jazz, and any piece written in
opposition to Nazi
ideology.
Calling on
a combination of racial
doctrine, Wagnerian
anti-Semitism, and their own
belief of Aryan supremacy, the
Third Reich sought to destroy
every form of music it had
branded with the term
Entartete Musik (degenerate
music) during the period that
led to World War II. Adolf
Hitler and Joseph Goebbels
worked closely to formulate a
plan that would erase this
music from the face of the
earth.
Through
their efforts, a generation of
musical innovation and promise
was not only abruptly
curtailed in Europe, but
excluded from its rightful
status in history. What should
have been the dawning of a
thrilling new phase of musical
evolution, instead fell silent
under the dark shadows of the
swastika.

"I
have at
last
learned
the
lesson
that has
been
forced
upon me
during
this
year, and
I shall
not ever
forget
it. It is
that I am
not a
German,
not a
European,
indeed
perhaps
scarcely
a human
being (at
least the
Europeans
prefer
the worst
of their
race to
me) but I
am
a Jew."

Prisoners'
Orchestra during a
Sunday concert for
the SS-men in
Auschwitz
in 1941.
The orchestra was
probably conducted by
the inmate Franciszek
Nierychlo.

[Photo
credit: Main
Commission for the
Investigation of Nazi
War Crimes, courtesy
of USHMM
<fcit.coedu.usf.edu/holocaust/gallery/81216.htm>]

.

Prisoners'
Orchestra:Gestapo
men viewing a parade
of prisoners forced
to march while
playing music.

In
addition to
torture and
dehumanization,
the Nazis
forced camp
inmates to
perform the
most
incongruous
activities.
One such
example was
the camp
orchestra
which was
formed to
delude the
prisoners
into a sense
of false
well-being.
Inmates with
musical
abilities
were forced
to march
around the
camp playing
music, while
being
ridiculed.

Among
those
pictured
are:
Yankele
(the
13-year-old
youth
playing
the
violin at
the
back),
Michael
Hofmekler
(standing
at the
left),
Boris
Stupel
(sitting
next to
Hofmekler),
Alexander
(Shmaya)
Stupel
(standing
at the
top
right).
Boris
Stupel
survived
Dachau
and later
immigrated
to
Australia.
His
brother,
Alexander,
perished
in
Dachau

Amidst
the horrors of Auschwitz,
music was a part of daily
life. There were several
orchestras and bands in the
two camps, made up entirely of
inmates. Marches were played
at the camp gates as the
labour gangs were led out to
work each morning and
musicians were called upon at
all times of the day and night
to perform for the SS and Nazi
officers. For those
incarcerated music was, in
Primo Levi's words, "the
perceptible expression of the
camp's madness". For the
surviving orchestra players,
music was their
salvation.
-- <BBC Source: bbc.co.uk/music/classicaltv/holocaust>

.

5.
Holocaust Memorial Foundations, Repositories,
and Museums:

Forever
let this place be a cry of despair and
a warning to humanity, where the Nazis
murdered about one and a half million
men, women and children, mainly Jews
from various countries of Europe.[Auschwitz
and Birkenau,
1940-1945]

On
January 20, 1942, fifteen
high-ranking civil servants and
SS-officers met in this house to
discuss plans of "The Final
Solution" of the Jewish question in
Europe, the decision to deport the
Jews of Europe to the East and
murder them. On the 50th anniversary
of the conference a memorial and
educational center was opened in the
villa in 1992.

Prisoners
on a death march
from Dachau move
towards the south
along the
Noerdliche
Muenchner Street
in Gruenwald,
Germany, April 29,
1945.Photo
Credit: KZ
Gedenkstaette
Dachau<nowpublic.com/nazi_death_marches_horror_story_released_0)

Main
Entrance Gate at Birkenau from
the Outside
as it looked from May 1944 (but
not before) when the outside rail
track was made to enter directly
into the Camp and branch out into
three (3) rail
tracks.

Photo
of Birkenau in May 1945 from the
Inside
The three (3) railroad branches
that are seen inside Birkenau
were constucted at the beginning
of 1944 to accommodate the
growing number of incoming
transports.

New
arrivals to the Warsaw Ghetto
celebrate the Passover seder in a shelter
on 6 Leszno Street.[Courtesy
of Yad Vashem, the Holocaust Remembrance
Authority]
<yadvashem.org/remembrance/rememberance_day/remembrance_day_2006/
/Mutual_Aid/Remembrance_day_2006_Mutual_Aid1.html>

.

A
Hanukkah celebration in the main hall of
the Westerbork transit camp.
(December 3-11, 1942)Photograph
from the Rijksinstituut voor
Oorlogsdocumentatie<history1900s.about.com/library/holocaust/blwesterbork16.htm>

This
park commemorates Wallenberg and others
who protected many of Budapest's Jews from
deportation to extermination camps. The
sign reads: May this park commemorate as
an exclamation mark for the post-Holocaust
generations the name of the Swedish
diplomat Raoul Wallenberg who saved the
lives of tens of thousands of Hungarian
Jews. May it also remind all of the
hundreds of thousands of Jewish martyrs,
of the labour-camp inmates who died
unknown, and of all those righteous men
and women who, putting their own lives at
risk, saved persecutees of certain
death.

<fcit.usf.edu/holocaust/GALL34R/WALL01.HTM>

.

Commemorative
Plaque
at the Bajorai Killing Site in
Lithuania

The
Jews from the Rokiskis
district were murdered at
Bajorai, also known as
Velniaduobe. The inscription
is written in two languages,
Lithuanian and Yiddish and, in
translation,
reads:

"In
this place Hitlerists
and their local
helpers on August 15
and 16, 1941 cruelly
killed 3207 Jews -
children, women, men.
Let the memory of
them be
blessed."

One
form of Nazi plunder was the
circulation of substitute banknotes
for use exclusively in the
ghetto.
This ghetto "money" had no value
outside of the ghetto.[
Meczenstwo Walka, Zaglada
Zydów Polsce 1939-1945.
Poland. No. 181.] --
<fcit.usf.edu/Holocaust/gallery/p181.htm>

Monetary
notes from Theresienstadt
Ghetto, given as payment to
Jewish prisoners, worthless
outside the
ghetto.

The
Cleveland Museum of Art, USA
acquired this painting at a London
auction in 1999. The painting had
been recently returned to the heirs
of Baron Alphonse von Rothschild
after 52 years in the holdings of
the Kunsthistorisches Museum,
Vienna. Confiscated from the
Rothschild apartments in Vienna by
the Third Reich during the Anschluss
(the political union of Nazi Germany
and Austria in 1938), the painting
was hidden with other looted art
treasures in a salt mine during
World War II. After the war, the
painting remained in the collections
of the Austrian State museums until
early 1999 when it was returned to
the family along with other works of
art from the same collection. They,
in turn, decided to sell many of the
works at auction.

THE
RAPE OF
EUROPA tells the epic story of the
systematic theft, deliberate
destruction and miraculous survival of
Europe's art treasures during the Third
Reich and World War II. In a journey
through seven countries, the film takes
viewers into the violent whirlwind of
fanaticism, greed, and warfare that
threatened to wipe out the artistic
heritage of Europe. For twelve long
years, the Nazis looted and destroyed
art on a scale unprecedented in
history. But heroic young art
historians and curators from America
and across Europe fought back with an
extraordinary campaign to rescue and
return the millions of lost, hidden and
stolen treasures. Now, more than sixty
years later, the legacy of this tragic
history continues to play out as
families of looted collectors recover
major works of art, conservators repair
battle damage, and nations fight over
the fate of ill-gotten spoils of war.
[PBS Documentary]